I tried playing Sniper Elite 4 as a pure stealth game, carefully sneaking past patrols and waiting for a plane to roar overhead to mask the crack of my rifle as I debrained my first fascist officer. But a little while later some wandering putz spotted me and so I sniped him, too. And then my minimap turned red and everyone got all aggro and so I just went ahead and sniped them all. Cut to me standing at the top of a lovely hill on the Italian countryside with a brand new moat of bodies at its base.

Sniper Elite 4 became much more fun when I started treating it less like a stealth game and more like a shooter with some sneaking. It isn’t as playful or full of gadgets as Hitman or Metal Gear Solid 5. You can lure enemies out of cover with sound and set explosive traps on bodies, but there are no boxes to hide in and no non-lethal options. I wouldn’t expect any in a game that delights in slow-mo x-ray shots of bullets crashing into foreheads and tumbling out the backs of skulls. That’s the Sniper Elite way, and it’s never been better at doing its own thing than it is in Sniper Elite 4.